Approximately 90% of India’s 500 million-strong workforce are employed informally, living hand to mouth, day in and day out

As the country's Covid-19 crisis continues to spiral, thousands of them are now going hungry, unable to work https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/indians-starve-as-covid-crisis-deepens/

Over the last few weeks, India's outbreak has reached terrifying new heights

The country reported a record-breaking 332,730 Covid infections over the last 24 hours. Fatalities are reported at over 2,000 a day but some put the real number at closer to 20,000

The focus has naturally been on the sickening drama of the health system’s collapse; the shortage of drugs, ventilators and oxygen.

Unable to keep up with the soaring number of deaths, mass cremations are taking place in parking lots as thousands die, uncounted

But beneath the headlines a wider hunger crisis is building, one that if left unchecked could start to engulf large parts of the country

A draconian two-month lockdown last year pushed an estimated 400 million Indians into further poverty and resulted in around 32 million dropping out of the country’s burgeoning middle-class

The latest surge in the virus means they are once again on the brink

Some like Naushad Ansari, 25, who lost his job as a food delivery driver when Mumbai went into lockdown two weeks ago have been rationing a cup of rice between six

He is not alone

@joerwallen reports | This article is free to read https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/indians-starve-as-covid-crisis-deepens/